


Keeping You For Myself

by aurumdalseni (kyo_chan)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Book 2: The Dream Thieves, M/M, Post-The Dream Thieves, Ronsey, The Dream Thieves Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 13:32:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18874186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyo_chan/pseuds/aurumdalseni
Summary: Gansey can't sleep. That's nothing new, except this time when Ronan joins him, it feels different. Like a fresh start or an open door...or a line to be crossed. They won't be the same if they do, but that's never stopped them before.





	Keeping You For Myself

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first TRC fic! Upon finishing book two, the urge to write for these boys hit me like a freight train. I'm super excited to have tried my hand at this, and I hope you enjoy! Thank you so much for reading!

Gansey sits in the middle of the ruined city of Henrietta like a titan, idly making repairs to one of the buildings. It’s his mess, but it’s not his mess, another thing he has to chase after and pick up the pieces for. It’s a labor of love he seems glad to do again, but there’s no question it broke his heart, broke  _ him _ . The pieces of his models scattered around him could each be given a name and a face, reasons he doesn’t sleep at night, fragments needing tender hands to put them back together because Gansey hasn’t known how to put himself back together for a long time. His glasses have slid down his nose, and he only has one earbud in. Despite that, he’s in his own little world, somehow small even with a miniature kingdom around him. Though all he surveys is in shambles, he still rules, a piece of himself in every broken building, every interrupted road.  

From his bedroom doorway, Ronan can’t see Gansey’s face, and it’s left him to analyze the droop to his shoulders and the tension in his jaw. At first, the body language reads like the day they’d discovered Cabeswater had disappeared. It had stolen light from Gansey, leaving a space for other emotions to fill, for his masks to cover up. Ronan knows with absolute certainty that it’s no longer gone. But even when things come back, the time that they’ve been gone leave a tear in you that makes every other fracture feel ten times worse. Gansey is still gathering up all the fragments and figuring how to fit them back in his life. The miniature town of Henrietta is a puzzle piece with unfamiliar shapes now. Gansey slouches over it with determination and exhaustion. 

Ronan is no stranger to the snaking venom of anger in his veins. Not at Gansey for wanting to fix it, but at himself for being the reason it was destroyed in the first place. Gansey would never blame him (sometimes Gansey forgets to blame Ronan for the things that are actually Ronan’s fault), and that just makes it worse. If he hadn’t been hunted, led some bastards right up into this sacred place, the shrine to one of Gansey’s true loves would still be intact. He would still be able to worship it in the tentative space between late and early. The anger might have gone further if Ronan had just come out of a nightmare, but the horrors are blissfully far away, and he attributes his insomnia to the lingering afterglow of reviving Cabeswater. Belonging to it is like belonging to Gansey, full of magic and the unknown, unpredictable yet so sure. And when you can bring dreams into the waking world, life is already pretty magical and unpredictable.

Ronan goes to the fridge first, pulls out two bottles of beer and opens them before making his way over to Gansey. It’s no surprise that, despite the single earbud, it isn’t until Ronan’s bare feet come into view that Gansey realizes he’s there. He looks up, nearly bumping his forehead on the bottle held out to him. Taking it with a slow blink, he’s either too exhausted or safe to care how unguarded his lost expression is. Ronan clinks his beer against Gansey’s before finding a relatively harmless place to crouch nearby. They don’t speak for a long time, Gansey savoring the first few swallows while condensation slips seductively down the glass. Ronan’s mind wanders to the thought of wet fingertips, Gansey’s thoughtful hands. His skin.

“I don’t know where to start,” Gansey finally admits, lips moving at the mouth of the bottle, eyes half-lidded. He could have been talking about the model Henrietta, Cabeswater, Glendower, Ronan.

Ronan cocks his head in a remarkable likeness to Chainsaw, making Gansey wonder if she learned it from him or he from her. “Where you always start, Gansey. Right where you left off.”

Gansey quirks a brow. “Surprisingly thoughtful.”

“Well, you’re sure as fuck not gonna backtrack are you?”

“Mm.”

Ronan isn’t wrong, but it still leaves Gansey at a loss. Back in the early days of his search for Glendower, starting over didn’t feel like such a burden. Hit a dead end, a cold lead, pick up the next one and go. Every new discovery that teaches him something new about the world, about magic being real was exciting and he embraced it. It shouldn’t feel like such an arduous task now to do the same thing. Pick up where he left off, hit the quest with renewed vigor. Maybe it’s because since coming to Henrietta, not only had the search for Glendower become more personal than ever, but the people connected to him are so tied into it all that every time something derails it affects more than just him.  _ Not always for the better _ . His thoughts flicker to Adam and his sacrifice, Blue’s missing mother, an honest-to-God hitman at 300 Fox Way. 

“Hey, man, you should slow down.”

Ronan’s voice draws his attention to the bottle in his hand, now approximately two-thirds empty, his mouth tasting like hops and regret. 

“You’re one to talk, Lynch,” he says idly.

“That’s how I know how to give the advice I don’t take.”

Gansey makes a scoffing sound. “People have been handing me champagne since I was fourteen. I can handle this.”

Ronan’s response is to take another drink, shrugging his broad shoulders.

“You want to talk about it?” Gansey doesn’t specify what about.

“No,” Ronan answers, because it doesn’t matter what. “Do you?”

“Not particularly.”

Gansey’s head fills up the silence between with all the things he doesn’t want to talk about. They’re like the way the trees speak in Cabeswater, numerous and heavy, sometimes making sense, sometimes speaking gibberish. Always reflecting his heart of hearts, as if he’s the one buried beneath them and not some king. The roots of what he desires start at his core, deep and strong, wrapping around his lungs, tangling between his ribs. He’s overflowing with all he wants to give, that sense of borrowed time making him frantic not to talk but to act. Ronan is watching him, he can feel it, very aware of him close. He transfers his beer to the other hand, reaching out to grasp Ronan by the back of his shaved head, pulling him in. There isn’t even time for the curse to get out of Ronan’s mouth before Gansey drags it into his. The kiss is so unlike the Gansey most of the world sees, but the perfect storm of a wildness only Ronan knows and all the potential heavy like thunder in the air.

Wet fingertips, Gansey’s thoughtful hands. His skin. A shiver runs right down Ronan’s spine, and it takes everything in his power not to drop the beer and grab Gansey with both hands, devour him on the spot. He wants to grasp this moment, turn it over til he knows it and make this dream live. But it’s not a dream, and it’s already alive. It always has been. 

Gansey pulls back, except that back is only far enough for it not to be a kiss anymore, but close enough Ronan can feel his lips moving. 

“I can’t,” he gasps. 

For a moment he’s afraid this will be over before it starts. “Can’t what?” he growls.

Gansey licks his lips, therefore he licks Ronan’s lips as well. It makes Ronan want to kiss him again. Patience, like many other virtues, is something he possesses frighteningly little of, and being afraid of what Gansey can’t do makes him want to be angry instead. In his mind, there’s nothing the king of his world can’t do. Ronan himself doesn’t have enough self-control to handle it if Gansey’s not going to follow through. 

“I can’t stop myself any longer.” 

Ronan feels a thrill down to his bones. He’s never heard Gansey’s voice quite like this before. The anger lying in wait doesn’t so much disappear as it does change. It burns and ripples through his blood, under ink and skin, but it’s dangerous in a different way. It’s like feeling the engine of the Pig turn over in his hand, dangerous and forbidden. No one had ever told them no, but they’d never allowed themselves to say yes before. A line not yet crossed, despite all the others they’d tread over in the last year. 

Gansey tries one last time to hold back. “If you don’t—”

It’s futile. “Fuck you, if you think I’m gonna stop you.”

Ronan bites at Gansey’s lower lip, sucks it into his mouth, then kisses him the way he’s always wanted to. Who better than Gansey to be given that gift? What better place than at the heart of their city? What better time than when Gansey needs him the most? 

Gansey’s beer goes down; it’s a wonder it doesn’t topple over in his haste to get closer to Ronan. They kiss and kiss and kiss, dragging in desperate breaths, twisting tongues, lashes against flushed cheeks as they fumble blindly to hold each other. Ronan’s bottle is abandoned as well, and he can’t be sure it didn’t fall. His nostrils flare with the musk of beer, desire and Gansey’s clean soap smell turned hot on his skin. Gansey chafes his knees on the uneven floorboards, but he doesn’t much notice or care, as if it wouldn’t matter once they were melded together. Ronan gathers him up, shows no reluctance in plopping Gansey in his lap. They kiss some more until they’re dizzy with the rush of it, this broken barrier more intoxicating than the beer could ever be. They’d waited so long to give in that it feels like they’ll never get enough anymore. Fine by Ronan, who would greedily consume Gansey, whether it’s good for him or not (it is). Fine by Gansey, who would give and give to Ronan, everything he is (and then some). They pant like they’ve been desperately running together, and it’s mostly true.

“You’re heavy,” Ronan complains, fingers deep in Gansey’s hair. 

“You’ll live,” Gansey hums, his face in the crook of Ronan’s neck, teeth finding skin with gentle persistence. He’ll undo Ronan in minutes if he keeps that up. 

Ronan makes a noise, noncommittally agreeable to that sentiment.  _ You’ll live _ . Unspoken in the blood-soaked mess of a nightmare come alive.  _ You’ll live _ . Whispered in a church hopefully where a dream was born.  _ You’ll live _ . Echoed by the trees in Cabeswater, word made real by its king. 

“I’ll live,” he whispers.

Gansey has quieted in his arms, breath warm on the side of his neck, trickling over wing tips and thorns. Ronan holds him, kneading into Gansey’s hips. Ronan’s mouth still carries the charge of those kisses, makes him hungry for more. 

“Mine,” Gansey whispers, trailing his fingertips over Ronan’s collarbone.

Correction, Ronan is  _ starving _ . 


End file.
